In The Google Trap – The Uncontrolled Global Power In The Internet Gerald Reischl describes the growing influence of Google due its monopoly in the digital environment. He calls for the reader to question the objectives of Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Reischl comes up with some interesting facts and aspects that reveal the enormous power Google has developed by providing many additional services that go far beyond the original search engine functionality.

Initially, Gerald Reischl, technology editor of the Austrian newspaper Kurier, starts by describing his experiences of when he visited the Google’s head office, the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. Google is conceived as an attractive and good employer. The company collects its staff with buses having wireless LAN, even if they live 1 hour away. Furthermore, the food for employees is free. They can have their clothes washed and ironed at their workplace or go to the gym. People working at Google can use 20% of the time they spend at work on their own projects.

Reischl points out that the perception of Google by both people and media is very positive. But contradictory to Google‘s credo „Don‘t Be Evil,“ he detects some aspects of Google and its position that should be taken into consideration critically. First of all, he criticizes Google‘s information policy, which he calls „weird.“ Uncomfortable questions are either left unanswered by Google, or the company overrides people with critical positions. Reischl claims that the Google PR-department checks and sugarcoats all presentations given by employees. Besides he maintains that Google never reveals real figures of aspects like generated data out of queries, locations of server farms and the earnings through advertising. But he cannot prove this assertion and has to refer to rumors indicating this.

Gerald Reischl explains how he thinks the strategy of Google has developed. The company, absolute market leader for search engines, provides people with free software applications and receives information and data about these people in exchange. This is one of the main points of Reischl‘s critique on Google: it collects incredible amounts of data without asking the users they take them from. Google has filed many patents, which show they possess plenty of technologies to identify users. But Google tries to avoid showing what their patents are really about, thus, instead of giving them adequate names like „user tracking“ or „monitoring“ they use terms like „usage statistics.“ Officially, they need data to enable the best search results for each user individually. But Reischl assumes that they need the data to create personalized advertising and user profiles.

Reischl explains that we leave a lot of traces when surfing the internet, especially when we use Google. The data created by every query are stored by Google for nine months and divulge information about the IP-address, time, day, browser, operating system and ID number of the created cookie. Google cannot refer the produced data to a person concretely, but they can conclude the information they have generated over time and create profiles belonging to certain users. A really troubling fact pointed out by Reischl concerns the user accounts people have at Google. If you use Gmail or Google Groups you have to register and create an account. Through this account, Google can link the data they gather directly to the user name connected to the account.

Reischl exposes a dispute between Google and data protection experts. Google is of the opinion that IP-Addresses do not reveal any clues concerning a concrete location or address of a user because the IP-Addresses are awarded by the providers dynamically. This means that they change and do not stay static and therefore it is not possible to track users concretely. But interestingly and in spite of that, Google sollicites its advertising application AdWords by stating that it is possible to use regionalized ads. Referring to patents applied for by Google in 2002, Reischl concludes that the company is categorizing, weighing and storing data of users according to their relevance for Google. Another point of Reischl‘s critique is that the stored data cannot be seen or deleted by the users. He cites Viktor Mayer Schöneberger from Harvard University who has argued that user information should have an expiry date to avoid abuse.

Another danger emerges because of Google‘s ability to conduct data mining on a grand scale. Because of their large amount of data, Google is able to detect patterns and can use these findings for their own advantage. Reischl wonders what would happen if Google used this possible knowledge about trends on the real estate market for example. Google is already providing a service called Google Trends, which allows the user to compare search frequencies of certain terms. Gerald Reischl raises the question whether we should allow one enterprise to accumulate that much power. He assumes that Google probably uses software like Google Trends, which is more perfected and sophisticated than the free Google Trends they provide for the normal user. The supply of information has become such an important issue that we should perhaps think about how to control information gatekeepers like Google, through public institutions. But the influence of governments on Google could result in even worse events. Reischl mentions that Google possesses so much relevant information about people, that governments and militaries could develop some interest in it, which is a severe threat to privacy and freedom.

Reischl believes that Google is not independent enough to resist efforts of governments to gain access to Google‘s data. China, for example, imposed pressure on Google successfully; Google accepted requests of China‘s government to censor their results in regards of critical issues like Tibet or democracy. Another example mentioned by Reischl is that Google gave a user‘s IP-address to Israeli public authorities. Initially, Google tried to resist but eventually handed the data to the state of Israel because of a court‘s judgment. To Reischl, this shows that Google cannot be as independent as an organization with so much power and knowledge should be. Additionally, Reischl explains the case in which a woman from New Jersey who was accused of killing her husband was convicted because the police discovered that she searched with Google for terms like „how to commit murder“ or „instant poison“ by analyzing her computer. To Reischl the issue is that the police could have received the information from Google, too. But that is far-fetched, using an example showing that the police found evidence without Google and then alarming people because the police could have gotten the information from Google seems over the top.

Reischl reveals another aspect of Google that users are often not aware of: even on sites that superficially have nothing to do with Google, users unknowingly send data to Google. The IT-giant provides webmasters with free software called Google Analytics, an instrument allowing website operators to collect basic information about users on their website. But the critical point is that the data generated when users are surfing a webpage that runs Google analytics, are sent to Google, too. It is the task of the webmasters using Google Analytics to inform the visitors about the circumstance that their data are passed down to a third party, in this case to Google.

Reischl‘s critique also concerns Google‘s dominant position in the advertising market. Initially he criticizes Google for placing ads in every service they provide, the search engine, maps, Google Earth and so on. However, in my opinion the placement of ads is not objectionable in itself, one cannot expect all these services to be free of costs and commercials. And even the aspect that Google‘s AdWords matches the ads to searched terms is just a logical step. Reischl warns that Google is at the point of substituting classical media agencies and becoming a marketer for any kind of ads in every medium. In the United States Google has already started the marketing of radio spots and printed ads. Additionally, they have a contract with NBC allowing Google to market parts of NBC‘s airtime. Hence it is Google‘s idea to be a marketer of advertising space and time in any medium. Surely, that is a threat for media agencies, but if Google is able to provide such a broad and simple service one cannot not blame them for it.

Another point that proves Google‘s intention to become a world power, according to Reischl, is their effort to enter the still growing, lucrative telecommunication market. With Android, Google published an operating system for mobile phones and entered this market, too. Reischl criticizes that Google intends to further grow into a new market and quotes Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google: „Mobile advertising is twice as much lucrative as not-mobile, because it is personal“. But it is not adequate to object Google for their intention to grow and enter new markets, that is not characteristic for Google, but lies in the nature of an enterprise. Another far-fetched claim of Reischl is that services like Google Maps or Google Earth could be used by terrorists to plan attacks, but if someone really plans a terrorist assault he can also go to a kiosk and by a map, Google does not lower the threshold for committing terroristic attacks.

Reischl mentions another point of critique concerning Google and plagiarism. Like Stefan Weber, in his „The Google-Copy-Paste Syndrome,“ (here: Review of Weber’s Google-Copy-Paste-Syndrome) Reischl believes that the increasing use of Google enhances plagiarism because it facilitates the process of copying and pasting a text. Searching has become a new cultural skill. He admits that Google cannot be blamed to be the main reason for plagiarism but complains about Google‘s not doing anything to avoid it. This is supported by Google‘s book scanning project, which has another interesting aspect. Reischl refers to Jean Noël Jeanneney, former director of the French national library, who holds the view that Google Books can cause an Americanization of book culture, because people using this service would mostly see and prefer books that are translated into English (French trauma: search for Flaubert and all you’ll find is English secondary material and translations).

Gerald Reischl‘s book is a wake up call to reconsider Google’s power in a critical way. He mentions interesting and well-researched facts that really stimulate reflecting on Google‘s position. For example, the fact that Google Statistics is often used on websites that have nothing to do with Google but send data to them. Or the fact that Google is able to link surfer behavior to a (user)name if that person has a Google account and is logged in. But the conclusions Reischl draws on the base of the collected facts are only assumptions about Google, which he presents like facts. Exemplarily, Reischl asserts that Google is spying on all of us because they have applied for patents of technology enabling it. This conclusion may be traceable but does not have the quality of real evidence proving that Google is collecting data and tracking users on large scale. Sometimes it appears that Reischl tries to prove the conspiratorial plan of Google to become a global power too intensely. He tries to create an atmosphere of anxiety by using hypothetical scenarios which are supposed to support his view on Google. For example, the murder case of the New Jersey woman. Google had nothing to do with the investigation but Reischl sees danger because it could have. This way of arguing weakens the well-researched facts which are prevalent in the book because it puts them in an exaggerated context.

A New York Times article about critical aspects of Google Books:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/technology/internet/02link.html?fta=y

German book review of The Google Trap in DIE ZEIT:
http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/16/die_google_falle?page=1

A (very bad) video Gerald Reischl has made at Googleplex in Mountain View, California:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POfcyPE7oVA&feature=related

Gerald Reischl‘s website about The Google Trap:
http://www.googlefalle.com

A link to Gerald Reischl‘s homepage:
http://www.reischl.com/

Link to Heise‘s website about Stefan Weber‘s The Google-Copy-Paste Syndrome:
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/buch/buch_25.html

Review of Stefan Weber, Das Google-Copy-Paste-Syndrome: Wie Netzplagiate Ausbildung und Wissen gefährden. Heise Verlag, Hannover: 2009.

The Google-Copy-Paste-Syndrome: How Web-Plagiarism endangers Education and Knowledge, written by Stefan Weber, deals with the influence of the ever-increasing internet use on the prevalent culture of knowledge. Austrian media scholar Weber states that the soaring spread of the new media results in a „text culture without brains.“ Stefan Weber decided to become a plagiarism-scientist after he discovered that a theologian from Tübingen has written off 90 pages of his own dissertation. Since that he has collected 14 folders with over 60 cases of plagiarism which build the base of his work. Internet enhances plagiarism in schools, journalism, the arts and especially at universities. Weber criticizes current media and cultural studies programs which ignore the augmented emergence of plagiarism due to an exaggerated optimism towards new media, thereby enhancing the problem by spreading their infinitely technophile theories.

The author, who lives and works in Dresden and Salzburg, states that today‘s students follow a process of three steps to create academic texts. Initially, they Google their topic. Then they copy and paste significant parts of text found on the Web. Knowing the importance of the outside appearance they finally layout their produced mosaic. Weber cites American studies proving that 36% of the students have admitted to have copied sentences in the web and have pasted it into their academic work. For Weber this development is the consequence of the omnipresent use of the internet, because it facilitates the appropriation of texts. The author argues that by allowing this “culture without brains” to spread, the elaborate academic system of reference puts itself in danger. Weber‘s position is that a „recycling“ text culture, which permits people to plagiarize, will end up in scientific stagnation.

The number of plagiarism cases has increased over the past years and Weber relates this to the increased employment of the internet. A current example of plagiarism is Chris Anderson’s Free. Waldo Jaquith revealed in a blog that he discovered passages in the book that were nearly copied verbatimly, mostly from Wikipedia but also from other publications, without references. Chris Anderson already has apologized and wants to publish the references digitally. Besides Weber uses studies in the United States and the UK, which show that ca. 30% of all students are plagiarizing. But these numbers also reveal that the source of plagiarism is more often a printed book than an online text. This weakens Weber‘s argument that a new culture of plagiarism has risen online because it shows that the writers of these studies mostly wrote off paper books and that plagiarism is not an online problem in most instances. Though that does not debilitate his thesis, saying that the culture of appropriating texts (no matter of what kind of source) without comprehending them derives from extensive internet use. Because it is still possible that using the internet lowers the threshold to begin plagiarizing.

Weber admits that there are no empirical data that prove a positive influence of the Web 2.0 on the number of plagiarism cases. In spite of that he claims that there is a positive influence on the culture of producing texts without reference. This „sampling culture“ is enhanced by the free licensing ideas existing in the internet. Weber traceably argues that the idea of free licensing derives from the development of software and should not be transferred unconcerned to a knowledge culture that is based on texts.

Weber asserts that content is not the most important thing on the Web 2.0 because it provides the user with the technical preconditions to put up websites easily (with software like media wiki). After creating a new site it needs to be filled with content that is usually copy-pasted from elsewhere. I hold the view that this argument is not very convincing. Concluding that the existence of a technology that facilitates the production of content results in plagiarism seems to be too critical. Logically, it should be the other way around. Because technical investments are marginal, there are more resources available to create content. Today, nobody would assert that Gutenberg‘s invention of the printing press caused intellectual decline. Additionally, Weber tries to prove the proximity between Web 2.0 and plagiarism by stating that plenty of web portals and social networks are copies of American originals. But claiming that users of such a copy are more likely to plagiarize appears to be a bit farfetched, too.

Weber also mentions further reasons for the increase of plagiarism that go beyond blaming only the internet and new media. For example, he mentions that some universities do not teach introductions into academic working methods or teach them wrongly. Another interesting reason noted by Weber is that studying at universities has become a sort of CV management. Studying itself has become less important while the managing of achieving certain titles by simulating competence is becoming the main task for students. But he also claims that some students are lazy or too dumb and therefore plagiarize and he tries to prove these assertions by showing a few examples from internet forums citing students who are searching a way to reduce their work. But lazy students have always existed and giving single forum-extracts is neither a way to show that this really leads to plagiarism nor does it show that students of today are lazier because of the internet.

Furthermore, Weber gives a good indication to what is often forgotten when we talk about Google and its official aim to „organize the information of the world.” Weber mentions that Google just organizes the digital world’s information. So, if we only rely on knowledge transferred by Google, we will probably miss out on a lot. Weber also doubts the benefits of Google‘s book scanning project Google Books. The availability of a lot of texts online makes it possible to penetrate them by scanning and superficial browsing and as a consequence this could reduce reading competence significantly because it is just not necessary anymore to read and understand texts as a whole. Thus the scanning project of Google could be a real threat for the book as a medium. But he also criticizes Google Books because it enables plagiarism by supplying texts, although they could not be marked and copy-pasted, the texts could at least be written off. But that is not a problem of Google Books or the internet, writing off has always been possible—also from paper books.

Weber points out that the culture of plagiarism also spills over to journalism and arts. He complaints about journalists who use information they gather from Google to simulate their competence in regards of the issues they are dealing with. In this way they do no longer have to do classical investigation. But for me the question is if this changes the facts that are provided to the audience. If the information found on Google is the same as the information the journalist received by local research it does not change what kind of knowledge reaches the audience eventually. But Weber points out an interesting effect as a consequence of the use of Google by journalists. They lose their function as Gatekeepers which is now executed by the Google-algorithm.

According to Stefan Weber, the intensified usage of Google and Wikipedia builds the base for a generation of students that will be incapable to read and comprehend texts. This principle of not capturing full content and just using texts partially and superficially causes problems for the academic system. In Weber‘s view a new culture of simulating competence emerged that has started to replace the prevalent culture of academic practices and knowledge. This „culture of hypocrisy,“ as Weber calls it, flourishes in a milieu of technology- and media optimism that can be found in media studies circles. That is another important and striking aspect of Weber‘s book. He consistently criticizes media- and cultural studies because he is of the opinion that they follow a paradigm that does not leave any space for a critical opinion on the increasing digitalization. He refers the uncritical position existing in the media studies to certain myths dominating them. One myth, for example, is the hidden technical determinism, which means that technology is always emphasized as something mankind has to follow. Weber does not like this idea of technology as an almost auto-poietic system that operates completely independent of human beings. His opinion is that we should not forget that humans produce and control the technology. Another example is the myth, most central to Weber, which says that current media studies consistently disagree with all positions that take negative consequences of New Media usage into consideration.

Weber criticizes cultural studies and the media itself for supporting this development with something Weber calls „bullshit PR.“ He uses a definition of bullshit from Harry G. Frankfurt who called it a discursive strategy to maintain everything you want to. In Weber’s opinion cultural studies and constructivism provide an academic background for the new text culture of plagiarism and stupidity. In Weber‘s view constructivism builds a fertile ground for plagiarism by questioning the idea of an author. Constructivists legitimize plagiarism by declaring the idea of authorship to a social construct. The cultural studies supply the „culture of hypocrisy“ because they do something, which Weber calls „Mickey Mouse science”. That means that during the last years a lot of cultural scientists did qualitative researches that in Weber‘s eyes did not gain any knowledge and were open for any kind of result or „bullshit.“ By using „soft“ methods and choosing research themes of which the outcome is already clear the cultural studies in their today‘s shape support the emerging change of our knowledge culture.

Moreover Stefan Weber claims that the extensive use of the internet is a menace to our existing language culture. He is of the opinion that trends like „weblish“ and „cyber talk“ can become a real danger for the written language, especially in science. He accuses media and cultural studies again for being to optimistic towards enhancing mediatisation and for ignoring studies that show negative outcomes of it. Weber also emphasizes on the education of adolescents who are confronted with an growing amount of media. His opinion is that this has more negative implications than positive ones. Furthermore, he mentions the lack of critical emancipation of the new media users. During the 90s there was the hope of democratization and informational independence that would result in a critical publicity, but these ideas have vanished and Weber concludes that we mostly use new media for its own sake.

Stefan Weber‘s book is an interesting work, which encourages the reader to think about the increasing spread of new media in all parts of our lives. He warns us to keep in mind that digitalization and mediatisation can also have negative outcomes, which should be examined by media scientists. Weber tries to fight for appropriate methods in the academic world, which are threatened by the increased ‘Googlization.’ Unfortunately, Weber weakens his own argument because in my opinion he does not follow the strict academic demand he postulates throughout his own book. The whole work is written very emotionally and the reader sometimes gets the impression that it is Weber‘s personal campaign against plagiarism. His criticism on cultural studies and constructivism appears polemical and it does not seem to follow scientific rules too strictly, although his points may be advisable. According to this, he often uses single examples he has found somewhere in the internet. He for example demonstrates the laziness of students with one extract of a forum. A further example of this practice is his proof of the decline of language, Weber shows extracts from the internet showing gross samples of „Weblish“ and then concludes that this is a severe threat to the written culture. At another point he criticizes mobile phones because they provide a good opportunity to cheat during exams. This seems to be a bit pedantic, cheating has always happened and before mobile phones existed students used cheat sheets. So this is not a good example of how new media can be a threat to our knowledge and academic system.

In spite of this criticism, The Google-Copy-Paste Syndrome is an alarming book that reminds us to stay critical towards new media. Because, as Stefan Weber states correctly, by being too optimistic and uncritical, the scientific world looses its power of interpretation and leaves the cultural development regarding media to the technology and entertainment industry. The book is a like a thorn in the side of media studies telling us not let go our capability of criticism concerning internet, digitalization and new media.

An interview with Stefan Weber in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

http://www.faz.net/s/RubCF3AEB154CE64960822FA5429A182360/Doc~E8E6AE7133D524A489ECAE90CB0B2558A~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

List of Stefan Weber‘s publications:
http://www.kfj.at/publikationsliste-stefanweber.htm

An interesting article concerning this issue by Nicholas Char:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

German Wikipedia site about Stefan Weber:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Weber_(Medienwissenschaftler)

Heise website about „The Google Copy Paste Syndrom“:
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/buch/buch_25.html